Science

While storm chasing this past Sunday we stopped to re-evaluate our target when we caught this beautiful smooth channel positive bolt on our GoPro 

/stormchasers /nature /dash

Hello! I'm a plasma scientist and I'm chain-reacting to this quite rare (and strong!) lightning bolt. I'm using the hook to explain a bit what plasma discharges are, and what can we use them for. In the laboratory, in industry, and in your house!

Professional [scien/ar]tist.

 I make neon stuff.

Go $NEON CA: 0xC96ba151e7Bd6C56A8AE3BA44cA82B5433e72b07

Yes!!!!

Hey Chronist, I love how you used our big beautiful volt as a “chain-reaction” segway to telling us what you do with plasma. 

Awesome video Btw! 

We love plasma! We love lightning! We love nature’s raw plasma!

Life partners & photographers. Storm chasing is one of our passions | Mod /nature & /itookaphoto Light ・Vision ∙ Emotion  
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Ok, I'm glad you asked hahaha! It varies. Additionally, we can generate it from other sources, such as microwaves.
Those that use voltages are many orders of magnitude less powerful, typically around 20,000 - 40,000 V (compared to millions of Volts in lightning discharges). 
The potential necessary to start a discharge varies based on several things. However, one easy way to think about it would be imagining that there is a distance that the electrons have to cross, which we call the gap. The larger this gap, all other things maintained, the larger the voltage necessary to push the electrons into creating a plasma path to cross. 
In the case of lightning, this gap is from the clouds to the ground, so a few kilometers. 
In the lab/industry, we work with gaps of millimeters to centimeters, so we need much less voltage. 
Another important thing is gas and pressure. In the case of lightning, that's the air we breathe at atmospheric pressure. But some gases, especially the noble ones like Neon, Argon, or Helium, need much less voltage to ignite a plasma. 
And finally, by lowering the pressure, this is even easier. 
That's why those long fluorescent lamp tubes "exploded" when they were broken, because they had a mixture of noble gases under low pressure inside them, to make it easier for the electrons to cross the gap, which was effectively from one side to the other of the lamp. 
So whenever you turned one of those on, you were igniting a lightning bolt without noticing 😁

May I ask what kind of voltage are you using? I’m sure it’s as dangerous as the kind we chase. Or does plasma voltage vary?

Thanks a lot. You guys are amazing!! While I make the baby ⚡ at the lab, you go out and chase the real ones!!! 🙃